Darwinism and the evolution of man / by H.C. March.

  • March, Henry Colley.
Date:
1883
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Darwinism and the evolution of man / by H.C. March. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    92/96 (page 34)
    natural history. Etymology is a kind of embryology; and there are verbal homologues and rudiments as well as animal ones. If fossil forms, discovered in the earth's crust, supply missing zoological links, no less do fossil words, found in archaic manu- scripts and in sculptures of the past, often reveal an unexpected connection in nomenclature. A linguistic arrangement such as that of the Indo-European tongues, is like a classification of botanical orders, and the gulf that divides the Aryan, the Turanian and the Caucasian languages is similar to that which separates mammals, birds and fishes. But, as great unlikeness of structure points to the immense duration of animal life, so does great diversity of speech indicate the high antiquity of mankind. How little has the coast-line altered since Caesar landed on British shores nearly 2,000 years ago ; how remote must be the period when this country, separated by no sea from Europe, was traversed by palaeolithic hunters ; and, as the simple arts they practised required many ages for their invention, perfection, and wide diffusion, how certain it is, that when we have gone back to those dim and distant days, we are yet far from having reached the origin of our race. It is not a little remarkable that we owe all our knowledge of these primitive beings, to their use of an indestructible material for implements. They have left neither dwellings nor tombs, and every vestige of their bodies has vanished away. But it is, perhaps, more remarkable still, that all organic traces of a much less ancient race, of the neolithic tribes of Lancashire, have vanished likewise, though their silicious relics are found on the hill-tops every day. Of those who lived before the palaeolithic age, who wrought only with horn or wood, we may remain for ever ignorant. But by the flints that strew the ground, we can discern, however faintly, the path ancestral man has trod. We can estimate his patient ingenuity and marvel at his perennial courage. At one time surrounded by tropical carnivores, deadly and terrible, and at another time pierced by the storms of arctic winters ; a prey to diseases he could not cure, and bewildered by the unseen forces that encompassed him ; wandering through every form of error to arrive at the first glimmerings of truth; with no aid and no knowledge from without; witless of the metals that were under his feet, of the wealth of agriculture always in his reach ; it was with a weapon of flint that he carved his fortune and smote his adversaries, and raised himself from where he once stood, a little higher than the beasts, to where he stands now, a little lower than the angels. CLEGG S STEAM PRINTING WORKS, ROCHDALE.